Developer Richard Fabo is seeking to make Arduino builders completely happy, by giving them Unhappy-tf — the Easy Arduino Debugger, designed to ease fundamental debugging over a serial connection.
“As everyone knows – debugging most well-known AVR boards will not be (so [easily]) potential with any debugger,” Fabo explains, “[so] most of us are utilizing simply [a] couple of Serial.print() instructions. Nicely, it really works, nevertheless it’s not very handy. So I made a small library, which might be included into current code and which permits to set breakpoints, learn (present) variables and modify them utilizing any serial terminal (like included Serial Monitor in Arduino IDE, CuteCom, Emacs’ serial-term, or just by command cu).”
Unhappy-tf goals to make your Arduino debugging simpler and your growth course of happier, regardless of its title. (📷: Richard Fabo)
Unhappy-tf, the Easy Arduino Debugger, is not making an attempt to be a complete debugging instrument; as an alternative, it is merely making an attempt to supply one thing that is higher than throwing a bunch of handbook print statements at essential factors of an issue. As soon as included, the library permits for the simple creation of a spread of breakpoints — able to studying or modifying int, byte, and lengthy variants, and of stopping execution if a sure situation is met.
“When the breakpoint is activated,” Fabo explains, “the serial console inform[s] about this.” When it does, Unhappy-tf switches into an interactive mode — permitting the consumer to checklist variables, change variables, and power this system to proceed to the following breakpoint.
“Nicely, [it’s] not [rocket] science,” Fabo admits, “nevertheless it’s fairly helpful for me. Newer Arduinos or [Espressif] ESPs might be debugged utilizing {hardware} debugger (additionally ‘traditional’ Arduino might be, utilizing JTAG, however is it definitely worth the effort?), however I’m nonetheless utilizing [Arduino] Megas and Leonardos rather a lot, in Arduino-based PLCs [Programmable Logic Controllers].”
The library is now out there on GitLab, below the reciprocal GNU Basic Public License 3.